Although much of the attention has been on the threats posed to MPs since the murder of the Conservative MP Sir David Amess in October, Burke’s experience shows how ubiquitous death threats have become and how little is needed to spark them. You can, for instance, work in a GP’s surgery and be threatened with having your throat cut for not being able to offer enough face-to-face appointments. Patsy Stevenson, who attended a vigil after the murder of Sarah Everard and was arrested, said she couldn’t “count the amount of death threats I’ve had” after appearing on newspaper front pages.

Even teachers are targeted. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) says some of its members received death threats for teaching LGBT equality, but none would talk to the Guardian. “One head is too scarred by the experience to want to talk about it again, and the other is currently under attack so doesn’t want to bring more attention on themselves or their school,” an NAHT spokesperson says.

The statistics make for frightening reading. Last year, there was a 13% increase in reports of threats to kill in England and Wales, with 42,307 threats received between April 2020 and March 2021, up from 37,347 the year before. In the past decade there has been a four-fold rise, with only 9,480 threats recorded in 2010/11, according to the annual Crime Survey. Looking further back, in 1981 there were just 620 reports of “threat or conspiracy to murder” (the old name for the offence), and just 102 in 1971. A century ago, in 1921, there were 16.